Red Bull's 16-Minute "A Skateboard Film" Has Wings

I've reached a point where my day-to-day existence has morphed into something out of a hammock catalog. Where I used to be all about fried food and sports-doing, I now spend my leisure hours in a
state of constant vigilance against encroaching ear hair. Too, in order to function, I need naps as long as the afternoon is… well, long. Related: Is there anything more fulfilling than an
afternoon nap? Friend, there is not. I wish I could take an afternoon nap right now. Too bad it's 9:20 a.m. I'll apply for a waiver.

Anyway, this is why I get confused, as
no-longer-demographically-voluptuous people often do, when I'm blitzed by youth-leaning entities like Red Bull. Red Bull, a beverage-like substance which I lustily imbibe on the rare occasions that I
have reason to stay up past 7:45 p.m., invited me on multiple occasions and through multiple venues to check out its Red Bull Perspective series of something-or-other. Since somebody has to help the brand realize a
return on its poorly targeted online ad dollars, I clicked on over.

To hear the YouTube blurb tell it, I was in for an experience that would kill-crush my suburban complacency: "With the best
action sports clips on the web and YouTube exclusive series, prepare for your 'stoke factor' to be at an all time high." This, of course, sent me deep into the LD archives to identify my personal
historical stoke-factor pinnacle. After much research and redaction of names, dates and hospital records, I determined that I achieved it on the night I met my wife, who sometimes reads this
column.

That's my meandering way of explaining why nothing I say about Red Bull Perspective - A Skateboard
Film has any validity to it. While I might dig the core product, I'm no longer a member of the brand's target demo. If somebody approached a Red Bull action-sports marketing rep on the street
and said, "Dude! This guy said something about your video!," the rep would respond with a dismissive, "Dude, that guy is, like, not 26. He spends his money on rakes and diapers, not on
helmet-mountable flip-cams. He is a pre-fossil." I don't matter as much as I once did. I know this. I'm comfortable with it.

And yet I really enjoyed A Skateboard Film, which sends
four eminent skateboarders on a road trip and tasks them with a single challenge: Do skateboard stuff. And skateboard stuff they do, at three different locations in and around Arizona. First they hit
what appears to be an abandoned public pool and refashion it into a propelled-by-bungee-cord-over-upturned-picnic-table aerial zone. Next they visit what one of the participants quite accurately
describes as a "storage warehouse thing," which leads to jumps through the door, over the loading dock and out onto the street. Finally, they visit a field on the outskirts of town, where the
paralysis-inducing jump opportunities are as plenteous as the crabgrass.

It doesn't sound like much, but the combination of spirit and scenery - if there's a more beautifully shot and edited
brand video out there, I haven't seen it - renders A Skateboard Film far more intimate than it has any right to be. Yes, the skateboarders look and banter like skateboarders, which could
prove a turn-off for anyone inclined to take the law into his own hands when an unfamiliar figure delivers the weekly shopping circular. The film's subtle genius is that it underplays the extreme
gymnastics: It's less an exhibition than a quiet look at a culture that's usually sketched in stereotype (tattoos, backward baseball caps, live-to-skate-skate-to-live ethos, etc.).

Just as
essentially, Red Bull scores with its choice of skaters (Ryan Sheckler, Zered Bassett, Ryan Decenzo, Torey Pudwill). Whether or not by design, the four diverse personalities mesh in a way that doesn't
seem corporately contrived; there's little of the shotgun-wedding feel that we get in anynumber of campaigns that unite famous folk. It's easy to mock a testimonial like "he's a really good homey to skate with," but the interaction is
pure and pleasant. They don't take themselves too seriously; they respond to falls with a shrug that basically says, "If life gives you lemons, skate over them and then go get a snifter of hard
lemonade or something." One senses that talking shop with the quartet would be preferable to talking shop with a quartet of exalted surgeons or conductors.

Sure, at 16:27 in length, A
Skateboard Film is a veritable Ben Hur by the standards of online brand video. And yes, Red Bull could've tossed accidentally targeted oldie-olds a bone by setting the video to dad-rockstandards, rather than to a series of hip-hop/techno hybrids. But ultimately, A Skateboard Film works just as well as a brand showcase
as it does brand-independent entertainment. That's rare indeed.

Great piece. What a lot of brands can learn from Red Bull is how they do it and the time they've dedicated to it. They don't just show up at a trade show or host one event a year, they've dedicated tremendous resources to authentically get involved in this space.

Snowboarders in the 90's were seeing Red Bull stickers on riders long before the drink was popular or readily available in the US.

Around 1997, I was a junior level exec at a PR firm in New York with a major snowboard brand as a client. I remember speaking with a local magazine who covered the space and them telling me they received a case of Red Bull in the office and it definitely made me a little envious at the time since I'd never even seen a can in person, let alone taste the drink.